Black Mask (Vol. 33, No. 3 — September 1949)

We came around a turn in the path and I kicked something that was lying under a clump of shrubbery. It was Lee Marlow’s rod and reel, her new spinning outfit. Part of the line had become unspun and was tangled around in the twigs and thick grass. I straightened it out and found that a bass plug had been tied on the end of the line. It was a wicked looking little lure with a realistic wriggle on a slow retrieve and the off-set hooking made it hard for the fish to get a purchase on the plug and shake it off.

“Your Pops meant business, working with one of these things,” I said. I was just making conversation, trying to think what finding the rod and reel like this might mean.

Lee Marlow had hold of my arm very hard and I could feel the bite of her fingers. “Something’s happened to him, Matty. He... he wouldn’t just go off and leave his gear in the bushes like this. Matty! Matty, I’m scared.”

“Come on. Let’s walk a little farther. We’ll find him. There’s probably a logical explanation for this. Try to take it easy, Lee.”

Kind words. Very helpful. Matty Hoyle, the old comforter and advisor. The things I’d said didn’t do either of us any good as we moved around another turn in the path and stopped cold. We found Lee’s father.

Chapter Four Sinister Key

Lee stood there, staring and screaming, a blood-thinning sound that seemed to go on and on until you didn’t think you could stand it anymore and then, miraculously, it stopped. But the sudden, smothering silence that followed, seemed worse.

I caught her as she started to fall and looked over her head at the thing, swinging ever so slightly on the end of a length of rope from a tree limb just ahead of us on the path.

That it was Willis Marlow, was obvious even from the back. The plump, round-shouldered figure in the rumpled tweed suit, the unkempt, straggly gray hair at the collar in the back, saw to that. An old box-crate had been kicked over from under his feet.

I scooped Lee Marlow up into my arms and pushed off the path, through the shrubbery until I came to a small patch of grass. I set her down and began to chafe her wrists between my hands. She came around in a few moments, her eyes at first dazed and confused and then as memory returned, once again bleak and stark. She couldn’t even speak at first, just stared up at me, dumbly, while I tried to calm her.

“Lee, you’ll have to get control. I know it’s going to be hard but you’ve got to do it. I’ve got something to tell you about your father.”

The crying came then and she buried her face against my shoulder and it was bad for a few moments but it got rid of some of the tension. When she was finished, she dabbed her eyes dry and turned toward me. “I’m all right now, I think, Matty. For awhile, anyhow. But we’ve got to do something. We just can’t let him hang there like — like that. We—”

“Easy, Lee,” I said. Her voice was starting to rise. I watched her fight for control and make it and then I said, “You’ll hear it from the others, anyhow, Lee, so I might as well break it to you here. Maybe it’ll be easier.”

She didn’t say anything. She waited for me to go on. I took a deep, ragged breath and pitched into it.

“Your father killed himself, Lee, but it’s probably for the best. He — I guess he was going to have to face a murder rap, anyhow. It was beginning to show up that Harry Wenzel was killed deliberately — that somebody tossed him into Satan’s pen while he was either drunk or unconscious.

“There was an I.O.U. in Harry’s pocket, signed by your father, for over three thousand dollars that I imagine he lost in the poker game, last night. It looks as though your father killed Harry to get out of that debt. Then, in a fit of remorse, he came down here and took his own life.”

Lee’s small, firm chin hardened. A glint of anger came into her eyes. “No, Matty. No. That’s all off. The whole thing is wrong. It couldn’t be like that.”

“I know it’s hard to accept, but it’s the only logical way to figure it. Why else would he kill himself?”

“He didn’t, Matty. That’s just the point. Pops didn’t hang himself. I know it!” She shook her head, desperately. I felt sorry for her. She was a sweet, loyal little kid and she was trying hard, but denying the facts didn’t change them.

“In the first place,” she went on, “if Pops killed Harry Wenzel to get that I.O.U., why did he leave it in Harry’s pocket?”

I couldn’t think of any answer for that.

“And how could a little old man like Pops, hoist a big lummox like Harry Wenzel up over that high fence? You’ve got it all wrong, Matty. Maybe somebody did try to frame Pops, to make it look as though he murdered Harry and then took his own life, but it couldn’t have been that way. Pops didn’t kill himself.”

“What makes you so sure of that?”